Today is Friday. I'm 47 and overweight, so I can't say it came as much of a surprise when the doctor called on Wednesday with the results of Monday's blood work. Everything normal - except cholesterol and blood sugar. The cholesterol I expected - everybody who's anybody is on Lipitor or something, right? The blood sugar, though. Man, that one hit me broadside. Although, really, it shouldn't have. I've spent most of the last 9 years (since the birth of my second son) with a Damocles' sword hanging over my head, taunting me with daily (if not hourly) reminders that I needed to get serious about my weight...or else. Well, the "or else" has happened. I've become a statistic, joined the ranks of millions of other obese Americans now labelled "diabetic".
"Obese". What a nasty word. I'm tall, but not tall enough. I always refused to consider 30 extra pounds as "obese". (Of course, now it's up to 70, so who am I kidding?) This blog is not to be a navel-gazing journey through my days coming to grips with chronic illness, health insurance woes or weight loss. Rather, I'm planning on using you, my blog, to explain my lifelong love affair with food and how that affair came to an end. And, over the next 11 months, how the break-up and post-break-up time has treated me. I sincerely hope I never break down and get back together with food - or have a "one last time fling" with it, either.
Why 11 months? Well, I swore to myself last month (before all this diabetic stuff) that I would lose 50 pounds in time for my eldest son's bar mitzvah in one year. One month has passed, 11 to go. I may have lost some weight in the past month, but I can't be sure, as today - at the doctor's - was the first time I've been on a scale in quite some time. You see, as long as my clothes fit the same, I figured I didn't need to know the number. Turns out, I actually weigh 7 pounds less than I thought I did, so my starting point is not as horrific as I initially feared.
But, back to my relationship. No, I'm not one of those people who used food for comfort, or in place of relationships with people, or because my parents didn't love me or any of the other reasons that come up on The Biggest Loser. No, I just liked - loved - food. I became a good cook in graduate school. I really did not like my classes in graduate school, and often procrastinated by cooking. I learned to make pies. Chicken breasts stuffed with goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes were favorites (hey, it was the '80s). Friends and I made dinners they way other students went bar-hopping.
By now, some 25 yrs later, I have become a foodie - fascinated with planning, shopping and cooking (and, of course, eating) food. I shop at farmers' markets, eschew fast food, shop primarily at Whole Foods, refused to consume transfats before it became trendy to do so, and still refuse to buy anything that contains more than 5 ingredients - and all of those ingredients have to be things I can purchase myself at the grocery store. I'm not your Coke-guzzling, McDonald's eating, drive-thru, Twinkies person. But at the end of the day - too many calories of "good" food gets you to the same place as too many calories of "bad" good.
In my corner, though, I do have a few things working in my favor: I don't smoke, don't drink (aside from an occasional glass of wine once in a blue moon), know how to cook and already exercise regularly. In the other corner is - genetics and age. Hard to fight those.
But anyway, back to Wednesday, when the doctor called. I had just had lunch (finished of Tuesday night's homemade fried rice with chicken) and was starting on a biscotti with my coffee when the phone rang. The good news was that everything was normal except (here comes the bad news) - cholesterol and blood sugar. Turns out that I've been living the Land of Denial for a while and it has been a very pleasant place; my abrupt eviction has been painful.
The oddest thing was - my interest in food ended. Stopped. Not a loss of appetite - a loss of interest and desire. If this is the way a "normal" person thought about food, my life has profoundly changed. Not just that my "new normal" will involve daily blood sugar monitoring, at least 2-3 drugs, etc., but that I simply have no interest in food. Not a bad thing, I guess, but a day late and a dollar short.
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